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How to use alternate drivers with Jaunty Alpha 4 / Xorg 1.6 / no xorg.conf? (radeon vs. radeonhd)

Asked by floid

I'm just looking for a "best practice" for working with the new autoconfiguration features present in Xorg 1.6 / Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Alpha 4. If I'm looking to test some alternate drivers, should I [generate and] rewrite an entire xorg.conf, should I create one with only a "Device" section, or should I now be doing something completely different?

For example, my test system has AMD 780G graphics (R600-class). Autodetection has worked beautifully, but the current state of the xorg "radeon" driver seems a little slow at even 2D, so I figured I'd compare the "radeonhd" alternative.

This has probably been answered a dozen times already, but I haven't found it. Hopefully I have enough keywords here to make it easier for the next person!

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floid (jkanowitz) said : 		#1

To answer my own question, yes, it appears 1.6.x (or 1.5.99) is tolerant of only a "Device" section in xorg.conf and will still find my "InputDevice"s, etc.

The following is what I actually wound up with, autogenerated when I restarted the server without the right driver installed. Tossing in the 'driver' line did the trick:

Section "Device"
        Identifier "Configured Video Device"
        driver "radeonhd"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier "Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier "Default Screen"
        Monitor "Configured Monitor"
        Device "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

...Though for anyone else in the same boat, it is worth noting that both the radeon and radeonhd drivers have the same (unaccelerated) performance with the R600-class devices right now. "radeonhd" has yet to start rendering bits of my Firefox session in inverse video, so perhaps it's still worth a try.

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razor1394 (razor1394) said : 		#2

I have the same problem with my Mobility 3200HD. I guess my RS780 is similar to your chip? The 2d performance makes the desktop unusable. I've tried ati, radeon, radeonhd, vesa and fglrx. I even tried fglrx 9.2 beta but it still isn't compatible with Xorg 1.6. Vesa wouldn't even start as it couldn't find a matching gpu. ati, radeon and radeonhd have the 2d acceleration problem. I've tried enabling/disabling xaa, exa and shadowfb without any luck.

00:00.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 Host Bridge
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 PCI to PCI bridge (int gfx)
00:04.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 0)
00:05.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 1)
00:06.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 2)
00:11.0 SATA controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 SATA Controller [AHCI mode]
00:12.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB OHCI0 Controller
00:12.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700 USB OHCI1 Controller
00:12.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB EHCI Controller
00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB OHCI0 Controller
00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700 USB OHCI1 Controller
00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB EHCI Controller
00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 SMBus Controller (rev 3a)
00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 IDE Controller
00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA)
00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 LPC host controller
00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge
00:14.5 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB OHCI2 Controller
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h HyperTransport Configuration (rev 40)
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h Miscellaneous Control
00:18.4 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h Link Control
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RS780M/RS780MN [Radeon HD 3200 Graphics]
08:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller (rev 01)
09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 02)

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floid (jkanowitz) said : 		#3

My advice would have to be patience - AMD/ATI surely know Xorg 1.6 is coming, but fglrx has a regular release cycle (documented somewhere on Phoronix.com, off the top of my head, and surely on the AMD site) and they'll have to get it into "the next one."

Similarly, I think the 'radeon' and 'radeonhd' folks have received documentation for these chips now, but it will still take them some time to write up full support. Keep an eye on, say, radeonhd.org and the freedesktop.org wiki, or their mailing lists if you're feeling developery.

Things are looking a lot brighter for AMD/ATI support now than a few years ago, when the companies had just merged and the efforts at X11 and open-source support were still playing "catch-up." Now we just have to wait for the actual work to be done, rather than the politics to settle before people can start work. :)

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floid (jkanowitz) said : 		#4

Actually, in addition to that, it's strange that you get no love from the VESA driver; as far as I know that's only a flat framebuffer so it wouldn't perform any better than other unaccelerated drivers, but you might want to look into that and report it as a bug.

Something simple, like an xorg.conf containing only:

Section "Device"
        Identifier "Configured Video Device"
        driver "vesa"
EndSection

doesn't work?